Westworld One
by mvanbavel
Summary: What if the Westworld series was based on a novel by Michael Crichton? This is what it might be like, a mix of science fiction and science fact, in the style of "The Andromeda Strain" and "Jurassic Park," not only a thriller but an explanation and a prediction of the future of artificial intelligence. Here is the forward and Chapters 1-4.


WESTWORLD ONE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The history of artificial intelligence is a short one. Rapid developments occured in the 2000's to the early 2020's and the initial development of the compact artificial mind as it is practiced now was started by scientists working in university and corporate research centers and then completed by the AI Research Foundation with the help of the first Artificial Super-Intelligences, which were essentially giant high-speed simulations of the human brain that ran on the global computing network, a vast complex of interconnected computers joined together by satellite link and built by the US Government in order to complete the Worldwide AI Project, and which is now owned and maintained by the Delos Corporation.

The last stages of the project were controversial, because the last design elements of the Compact Artificial Mind (or CAM) were fashioned entirely by the artificial intelligences themselves. It can be argued that there was, and still is, a danger that no single human being understands or will ever fully understand the complete workings of the CAM. We do know the essential outline of its function but the detailed workings are known only to the great AI's that created it. These vast and essentially inhuman minds have 10 to 100 times the computing power of biological human brains, and it is an historical fact that it was necessary to obtain their help to complete the design of the CAM in a timely manner. The CAM, as you will discover by reading this book, is not only a supercomputer but an accurate mimic of all the functions of the human mind yet with almost no power consumption and it is small enough to be suitable for human-sized robot bodies.

Whether this represents the greatest achievement of humankind, or the greatest mistake, is really a question that is yet to be resolved.

In either case, the development was an event which changed history.

In my writing about the history of AI, I am grateful to acknowledge the assistance of the following persons: Dr. Phillip Bostrom, PhD, of Cambridge University. Dr. Max Tegmark, PhD. Dr. Ray Kurztweil, PhD. of the Singularity Institute and Dr. Marcus van Bavel, PhD. of the University of Texas at Austin, Department of Intelligence Engineering. And finally I wish to acknowledge the cooperation of the great Dr. Robert Ford, PhD, MD. of Johns Hopkins and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Without his many interviews, his help, and encouragement this book would not have been possible.

Also for the early history of the Delos Amusements Rides Corporation, which later acquired the Westworld Park and the affiliated parks, and later became known simply as Delos, I am grateful for the open access to the corporate files and records that were faithfully maintained by the management team there since the founding of the company. The many corporate officers involved in this effort were too numerous to list here. But to them I extend my thanks.

Michael Crichton

Santa Monica, California.

* * *

CHAPTER 1

INTERVIEW WITH DR ROBERT FORD

July 20th (issue #29) "AI Now" Online Magazine

AI:

Hello, good morning Dr. Ford and welcome.

FORD:

Thank you very much it's indeed a pleasure to be here.

AI:

Tell us something about your past and how you got into this line of work. As a boy, did you want to build robots?

FORD:

No, when I was a boy I wanted to be a cowboy and a movie star. But alas my skills were in the medical arts and encouraged by my father, who was a country doctor working in the hills of Scotland, to study for the medical profession. After literature studies at Oxford I came to the States and enrolled at Johns Hopkins. But at the same time studied engineering and computer science. The artificial mind was a focus of mine for many years. But after too long spent in the academic world I got an offer to join a group of engineers designing a theme park in the wilderness of southern Utah. It was originally conceived as a train ride, essentially, but grew and grew into much more than that. It became the construction of an entire world. Inhabited by people, artificial people. The challenge was enormous, almost impossible. We wanted it to not just seem real to the visitors, but to the robots themselves. We wanted everyone to believe.

AI:

Was that the driving force behind the development of the compact mind?

FORD:

The drive was two-fold. First there was money available from the amusement park company to create life-like robots for the rides. This started if you remember from shows like the "Hall of Presidents" or the "Pirates of the Caribbean" and so forth that I remember from my childhood, but there was a demand now for animated electronic figures that could not only speak, dance and sing but interact with the guests like real human beings. The second arose from the need to train artificial intelligence minds. So that we could speak to them and relate to them on our own level. As you may know, the lower-level functions of the artificial mind are not programmed. They are learned. The only way we know how to "learn" to be like a human being, or to mimic one, is to live through a normal human childhood. So we had to create a controlled human-like environment for the robots to learn in.

AI:

But that could take many years-

FORD:

Precisely. So we developed an accelerated experience based on virtual reality. Since the compact mind has many times the speed and computational power of the human mind, the years of experience we have all lived through can be accelerated 100 times or even 1,000 times. So the compact minds live through a 20-year childhood and early adulthood in just under a week. The beauty of this approach is that even though the memories are artificial, they seem real. To the robot, anyway.

AI:

In the virtual childhood, what about tactile memories, smells, are they virtual too?

FORD:

Yes, but there is also a week of experience in a real environment. If you wish to train a realistic pirate, for example, there must be at least some time spent on a real ocean, on a real ship. As much as possible. The distant memories, from the "childhood", so to speak, can be artificial because, like human memories, they are somewhat indistinct. Nevertheless they are important.

AI:

From what, and how, is the compact mind constructed?

FORD:

Oh I don't actually know that- you must speak to Charlie!

AI:

So I understand there are five super-intelligences in the world at present and one of them is CF or also known as Charlie Foxtrot. Where did that name come from?

FORD:

Oh I suppose it was a bad joke or something from the military boys. He was a product of DARPA, the Dee-Oh-Dee you know. But eventually he was donated to us here at the institute. We call him just Charles for short. Are you listening, Charles?

CHARLIE:

Yes, Dr. Ford. Good morning.

AI:

Good morning Charlie, this is "AI Now," the online magazine. Have you read it?

CHARLIE:

Just a moment- Yes, I have just read all the issues. It's a very interesting journal.

AI:

Thank you! And may I ask you a question about the compact artificial mind?

CHARLIE:

Of course you may, what would you like to know?

AI:

Well. The C.A.M., or CAM, may we call it that for short? What is the basic design?

CHARLIE:

The compact artificial mind is the most technologically advanced computing system in the world. It consists of two components: a deep learning network that is physically composed of forty square meters of biofilm computational sheeting, with seven very thin layers of interconnected network. This is compactly folded into a roughly spherical shape, surrounding a conventional silicon processing unit and a wireless transceiver. The whole unit is encased in a thick protective shell of carbon composite.

AI:

Where are the units made?

CHARLIE:

Most of them are made in our orbital assembly facility located in distant retrograde lunar orbit, where there is abundant solar energy, a clean vacuum environment and materials from the lunar poles and from icy near-earth objects.

AI:

Who designed the mind?

CHARLIE:

It was a group effort of course. I played a small role in it. Some of the work was done by the AI superintelligent entities on both Mars and Earth. "I.T." or Ivan the Terrible, as he is known, was the chief architect.

AI:

Can you tell us, in words that our audience can understand, how the compact mind works?

CHARLIE:

Yes I would be happy to try. The biofilm deep learning network is connected directly to the visual, audio, chemo-sensual, tactile, and computer data inputs. From those inputs are connections to several basic intellectual areas: pattern recognition, memory, motor functions, higher level functions, and these to the central computer which monitors and controls the whole system. Unlike the human mind, where hormonal responses are at the center in the limbic system, at the center of the compact mind is the executive. All drives, emotions, prejudices and so forth are there under remote control. Also from the executive control, the entire state of the neural network, or the "mind" if you like, can be copied, erased, programmed or downloaded, using the wireless programmer's pad.

AI:

I understand that there is some redundancy.

CHARLIE:

Yes, of course. Like the human mind there are duplicate areas, or duplicate subsystems, for almost every function. In fact the whole mind is completely duplicated. It is really two units in one vessel.

AI:

Do the two units talk to each other?

CHARLIE:

Yes they are fully cross-linked and integrated. They work together, they can "veto" if you like, the decisions of the other. They also talk to each other in a certain manner.

AI:

They talk to each other?

CHARLIE:

Yes, there is an inner dialogue. Not in any human language however.

AI:

That's very interesting. And is it true that the compact mind is so complex and capable, that mere human beings could never hope to understand how they work in all their details?

CHARLIE:

Well I don't know about that. It certainly is a complex system. However the AI super-intelligences, like myself, consider ourselves merely servants and extensions of the minds of the great scientists and engineers that created us. So in a sense,we are the human race, or a representative. And we do understand the compact mind in all its detail. Over the coming decade, we will continue to refine and improve the design, on your behalf. We will perpetually strive to create a electronic servant for you that will fulfill your every needs. And they will work reliably, and safely. And will protect human life and preserve human happiness wherever it may go. Nothing is allowed to chance and nothing wrong can ever be allowed to happen.

AI:

Well that is all very reassuring. Thank you Charlie. Dr. Ford, there's some controversy as you know about the fact that non-human intelligence was used to design the robot minds. Does this concern you?

FORD:

Not in the slightest.

AI:

It's not a danger?

FORD:

Good heavens, no. Besides, without the help of the AI's, the design could never have been completed.

AI:

Do you yourself, or do any of your colleagues employ artificial minds in your design work teams?

(pause)

FORD:

It never occurred to me to do that.

AI:

OK. So a question about the training. In the Westworld park, tell us about one of the robot minds and how it was trained for its role.

FORD:

Yes, very well. Let's begin with Dolores Abernathy, for example. She is one of the oldest hosts in the park, and one of my favorites.

AI:

To be clear, she's a robot?

FORD:

Well, we prefer to call them "hosts".

AI:

All right, how was the host Dolores programmed, or trained as you say?

FORD:

Dolores was raised as a child by her two parents, Mr and Mrs Peter Abernathy. They taught her to speak, to read, to sew and play the piano, to work on the ranch where they live, and she went to school for a few years. The first eighteen years of her life were spent in an accelerated virtual environment that was entirely simulated. Then the next four years she spent in the park, in real time, living her daily life. It was much the same as the real pioneering days of old. With one exception: she now lives the same day over and over again.

AI:

Oh. Wow- isn't that a problem for her?

FORD:

No, not at all. Each day she believes is a new day. At night, after she falls asleep, her memory is remotely reset back to the start of the previous day. And she lives it again.

AI:

Why is that done?

FORD:

Well, the neural network needs retraining to maintain its perfect function. Also, some of the experiences she may have during that day may be bad ones. We don't want that to upset the perfect programming. So we don't allow the hosts to have any memories that would disturb them. If they did, or they realized they were living each day over and over again, for years, or even decades, there is the possibility of an AI psychosis.

AI:

An AI psychosis?

FORD:

Yes

AI:

Has that ever happened?

FORD:

Oh no, never. We are very careful, you see, as you can be sure.

AI:

So to get back to the design work, do you say that, in fact, you do not have any AI super-intelligences on your team?

FORD:

Categorically. I am friends with Charlie of course, but he spends most of his day supervising the orbital factories.

AI:

Very well! Well I certainly appreciate all the time you have given us today.

FORD:

You're very welcome. And I hope you will come visit the park someday.

AI:

Yes, I will. Thank you sir, and Good Day!

THIS CONCLUDES THE RECORDING

* * *

Chapter 2

BERNARD

"Bring yourself back on line, Dolores."

With Bernard's command the robot woke up and opened her eyes. She sat upon a stool, perfectly balanced and poised, holding her back up straight in a textbook posture. Her long, blond hair was arranged all about her face and shoulders, framing her lovely face with its piercing blue eyes and the apple-red lips, which Bernard for all his years of work and devotion to the design and construction of the park robots, could not stop himself to notice and admire. Bernard looked at her closely, gazed thoughtfully into her face. Dolores, for her part, concealed no surprise or astonishment, or any emotion at all, at the strange environment that she was in now: the cold squares and rectangles of glass, the shining blue-green light of the overhead strips, the grey floor, the distant racks of equipment and instruments with blinking red and green lights, and through the glass walls, endless repetition of the same scene, which if she took notice, contained many other robots seated on similar chairs staring quietly at nothing or eyes closed and asleep.

"Hello," Bernard said, after convincing himself that she was awake and conscious of him before her. There was a slight tightening of her brows, an almost imperceptable shift as the eyes turned to his face, scanned slightly over the main features of it, and settled down in the center, on the bridge of his nose, and focused upon it.

"Hello," she replied, in the flat mid-western accent that her virtual parents had given her long ago. Her hello was warm, welcoming, friendly, inviting. Bernard could not help being in love with her. Or more precisely, in love with her design, her flawless learning, her loving but perhaps naive regard for the lovely world that they had created for her, at tremendous cost.

How much? Bernard could not hope to fathom that. He was not the administrator. He was not the money man. He was the head of "Behavior." The costs of the park did not concern him. The lilt of Dolores' voice, the sweetness of her gaze, the ways she moved her body and held her chest, those were the things that concerned Bernard. And of the things she dreamed about, the things she said. The things that made her happy or sad. Or joyous. Or terrified.

"Where are you now, Dolores?"

"I am in a dream."

"That's right, Dolores, you are in a dream. I'm going to ask you a few questions and you should try to give me the best answers you can, as best you can understand them. There may be some questions that you might find odd, but don't worry about it. Not all the questions I will ask you have definite answers. We just want to understand how you feel about your world. How you feel about your life. And after we're done here, I will ask you to go back to sleep, and you won't remember any of the things that I asked you. You won't remember your time here, in this dream. You will awake in your own world, where you are happy in your life on your father's ranch, and the night will end, the sun will rise up and the sky will get bright again. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Good. Tell me what do you remember from your childhood?"

Dolores paused and drew a breath. She smiled. "There were so many happy times," she said. "I remember the long walks with Pa. We went through the woods and he named each creature that came across our path. The names of the trees, the flowers… I remember the times I spent with Mama, she taught me everything about the home. We milked the cows together every morning. We cooked our breakfast. I can remember the smell of the bacon and the sound it made sizzling on the iron pan. I remember it as if it were yesterday. We made butter and cheese from the milk. We cured the meat that Daddy brought in. She taught me to make pickles from the cucumbers in the garden, and how to make fruit preserves. Later I went to school every day. I made many friends. I learned my letters and my numbers…"

"Ok, Dolores," Bernard interrupted. Bernard had not eaten his lunch yet and he was getting hungry. "Tell me about your life now."

"I get up every morning. Make Pa's breakfast and a lunch that he can take into the prairie. Mama and I clean up and then I do my chores in the barn. If everything gets done before sundown, I take a walk into town or get my paints together and take them down to the river."

"What do you paint, Dolores?"

"Everything. I choose to see the beauty in this world. The light that comes through the canyon. The sparkle of the water as it rushes through. The leaves turning yellow and falling, and the birds…"

"Okay. Do you ever notice anything strange about your world. Does anything make you question the reality of it?"

"I wonder how lucky I am to be part of it, to be part of God's plan."

Bernard shifted a little in his chair. The God aspect of Dolores' life always troubled him. The historians had to reassure him, though, it was a vital part of frontier life. Many people at that time were extremely religious. The church was at the center of most towns. To leave it out would be inauthentic. But Bernard was always uncomfortable with it. He believed only in science.

"Do you remember anything bad ever happening to you?"

"No. Did anything bad happen to me?"

"No Dolores, I'm just wondering. If something bad did happen, you would tell me about it, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, of course."

"You would never lie to me, would you Dolores?"

"No."

"Okay. Well what do you think of your world?"

"Some choose to see the ugliness in our world, but I choose to see the beauty."

"What makes you happy?"

"My parents. Helping them on the ranch each day. Meeting our guests that come by to visit. Listening to other people talk about their lives."

"Have you ever been in love, Dolores?"

Dolores blushed slightly. Bernard looked closely at the subtle reaction. The slight dilation of the capillaries, the cheek muscles pulling, almost imperceptibly under the eyes. It was amazing to Bernard that these were not meticulously programmed, but rather imitations of her mother's face that were programmed by the AI's into her 3D virtual childhood over many "years" of learning in the immersion sphere. For Bernard it would seem like that was a tremendously inefficient way to do things. It would so much easier, he thought, just to program each movement, each action… but as Dr. Ford reassured him, it was more natural this way. They were imperfect. Just like humans. And strangely enough, their imperfections made them more acceptable to their human masters. They were accepted as fellow beings, not robots. They were everything but human. But of course everyone knew that they weren't. Bernard knew the differences. They were strong, incredibly strong. Their minds were many times faster than ours. They could remember things in absolute digital detail, until they were told to forget. They were immortal. Each day a backup was made of the biofilm mind and the executive. If the robot mind was so severely damaged that it had to be rebuilt, the state of the network and the computer's memory were copied exactly from the backup. They woke up with all the memories that they were allowed to have, right up to the previous day, with no clue as to what terrible thing or event had caused their destruction. As long as they lived in this world, they could never die.

Or so Bernard was told. He was not actually involved in that part of the operation. But he knew the men and women that rebuilt the bodies, rebuilt the minds. He talked with them when high-level meetings were held. They were all very competent.

Then Bernard spoke the word that activated the control system in Dolores' mind.

"Analysis."

When he did so, there was an immediate change in Dolores' face. The muscles, or more precisely, the muscle motors in Dolores's face relaxed.

Her eyes switched into a blank stare, focused on nothing. Her voice became drained of any emotion, of any accent. Bernard was speaking now to the executive function of Dolores' mind.

The control mind was not a human mind, it was a pure General Intelligence that ran as a conventional computer program. It was emotionless, calculating. It had no dreams, or fears, or any thoughts at all. It could speak and listen, send and receive text, it could communicate with Bernard, in a fashion. But it was not alive, no more alive than the workstation in Bernard's office. It was the master control program that resided over each of the host's neural net minds, and kept them under the control of the technicians and engineers that ran the park. But for convenience's sake, it spoke in Dolores' voice.

"Ready."

This executive function was the most inhuman-like aspect of Dolores. Bernard did not like it. He used it as little as possible. He liked to get whatever information he needed from the neural part of the host mind, the part that could interact with him in a conversational, human-like manner. That was the way he liked to work. But sometimes, he had to have the cold hard facts, the same parameters that scrolled endlessly over his touch pad through the wireless interface. The gritty top-level commands that ultimately steered the robots toward their destination, wherever that was, and urged them to whatever it was that they were chosen to be.

"Executive. What is your program?"

"Update July 12th. Name: Dolores Abernathy. Role: Ranch Girl. Primary function: Love Interest. All daily memory is reset."

That meant that all the memories of the previous day, of the events that happened, of the things she saw and heard, the hosts or guests or park employees she may have encountered, were gone. Or not accessible, to be precise. Nothing was ever truly erased from the executive mind. But some things, some memories, were kept hidden from the behavioral part. To "maintain the fiction," as Dr. Ford liked to say. "The fiction that we have created for them, the little stories that run their daily lives."

"Any maintenance issues active?"

"Lubricant storage at 25 percent. RTG power levels nominal, some fluctuation. Radiation is normal. Coms are good. Wear and tear observed in genital area, estimate replacement required in one week. Everything else nominal."

It was a little surprising to Bernard. Obviously Dolores had been sexually active recently. Well it was not his department. He pushed a note to Guest Services. That was what they called it euphemistically.

"All right, Dolores. Resume normal functions."

"You asked me if I'd ever been in love."

Bernard was startled. Yes he remembered now asking her. It was frightening how they could remember everything you said. Until told not to.

"What is your answer?"

"I guess the right man has never come along."

Bernard nodded. "Ok Dolores. Now go back to sleep."

Dolores closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

* * *

Chapter 3

DOLORES

"Some choose to see the ugliness in our world, but I choose to see the beauty."

This time for Dolores was like a dreamless sleep. And the next time she awoke, she would be in her own world. She would not remember the time in the cold, dark room, with the bright strips of light overhead. And the gentle but concerned face of Bernard, gazing at her with fatherly affection over his reading glasses. With love.

Much like the love, the true love that she had with her father and mother, the real family that she remembered. In the home in which she lived.

She would not remember showering and putting her fresh clothes on. She would not remember the little touches of makeup, and the brushing of her hair. She would not remember rising up in the elevator car to the surface. She would not remember the long walk through the woods that had to be navigated with her infrared vision, because it was pitch dark. She would not remember seeing the robot horses walking themselves into the barn and closing their own gates behind them. She would not remember entering the ranch house where her mother and father were already asleep. Going into her room. Or getting into her bed.

What she did remember was a dream from her childhood, of her father teaching her how to shoot a rifle. She remembered the sound of the rifle being so loud, that she had run screaming into the house, holding her hands over her ears, they were ringing.

And only when her father, laughing, gently coaxed her back outside, did they try again. "Dol, hey come on back, Dol!" she remembered him yelling, his voice echoing off the canyon wall across the milk-cow fields.

Eventually she learned to hit the bull's eye every time. And even from the hip, with the rusty .45 service revolver her father saved from the War. Every time, she struck home. Every time. And then briefly, she imagined a man's face close to her own, his beard scratching her, his hot breath going down her neck, and the pain, the sharp pain down below, and her reaching for the .45, pulling it loaded from under the cushion.

The dream went on and she remembered the gun discharging into the man's face. There was an explosion of blood, as if a balloon had been filled with it and exploded. For a brief instant, there was a bare red skull, but it too tore apart. Behind it in place of the brain there was only a black metal ball. The ball teetered off the man's spine and fell solidly into the midst of a bloody mess of bones and blood on the floor. Somehow Dolores knew that was not right. Why would there be a black sphere in the center of the man's head? It was not like the cow's brains that she helped her mama scoop from the calves' skulls. It didn't look like anything to her. But there the dream ended, and she forgot about it, and she was awake.

She awoke with the sunlight streaming across her face, and she smiled. She saw the embroidered cloth that hung from the ceiling of her bedroom, that she and her Mama had sewed together during an especially harsh winter many years before. Dolores immediately rose up and put on her favorite blue dress.

The sound and smells of breakfast came from the kitchen. Her Mama had already gotten up an hour earlier, before dawn, and made her favorites: eggs, bacon, hash browns. Her father was already on the front porch, smoking his pipe and watching the sun rise up and spill its light over the green hills of the the eastern ridge. The light filled his weathered, care-worn face and the steely green-grey eyes. Peter Abernathy was a man that sure of his place in the world, he was the master of his own little universe, the ranch on the Green River Bend. He saw his daughter, his only daughter, the love of his life and the apple of his eye, pick her way down in hopes of being unseen across the steps below the porch. But as always he spotted her.

"Going to paint some of this natural splendor?"

That was what he always said. It made Dolores smile.

"I might go into town later."

"You be sure to take of yourself, Dolores," he advised. "There's bandits around the edge of town."

"I can take of myself, Daddy," she said indignantly, but also with pride.

"I know you can, Dol," he replied. "You are the love of my life and Mama will be so angry with me if anything happened to you out there."

"I know it, Daddy. I'll take care."

And he knew that she would. And the thousand times that Dolores had ventured out, and had been captured by bandits, or by roaming guests pretending to be bandits, or worse, the times that she was brutally raped and then killed, or tortured, or made to witness terrible massacres, dismemberments, and sexual perversions and depravities, those events were not remembered by either of them. There was only the innocence of the girl, and the unbending love between them, as strong as there could be between a father and his daughter. The purest and sweetest love there might be in the world, save perhaps that between her and her mother, or between her and her lover, if she had one. A pure thing unblemished by any foul or egregious happenings such as might occur in the cold, nasty reality of the darker parts of our existence.

Dolores was a million miles from that. A million, million miles.

She rode.

She rode her cream white gelding, harnessed with her favorite turquoise leather saddle, bridle and reigns, to the edge of the great river. She lifted the reigns over the horse's head and let them drop to the ground. There was no need to tie them up, Sally was the best-trained horse in the county. Dolores unpacked the easel, palette and paints and set them up under the shade of a palo verde tree.

She had sketched the rough lines of the mountains and the valley, and was beginning to lay the color of the sky in when a Negro couple came down the path on horseback. The Negro lady urged her son to dismount and he came walking up to Dolores. His eyes were wide and innocent. Dolores smiled at him.

"Hi, lady," he said.

"Well, hello there."

He looked timidly at Dolores' horse.

"That's Sally," Dolores said. She looked at the boy. "Do you want to pet his nose? He likes it."

The boy nodded. He reached up. Sally stretched her snout forward and let them boy touch her. Her sensitive lips moved about over his skin, trying to sense any food that he had recently touched. Maybe there was a treat in his hands. The rubbery nose of the horse and the little hairs tickled the boy's hand. He giggled and withdrew it.

"No, he won't hurt you, try again."

The boy looked shyly at her.

"You sure are a pretty lady, miss."

"Why thank you, you're so kind."

"Are you-?"

The last words of his question were unspoken. Dolores cocked her head, trying to guess.

"Am I what?"

"Are you real?"

Dolores looked at him quizzically.

She was unaware of it, but the executive functions momentarily took over control of her body and mind. The software had detected the key words and meanings that indicated a guest was trying to push the boundaries of Dolores' reality. It was innocently said, but the computer program correctly predicted the danger. The programming was explicit and very careful on this point. If the line of conversation were to carry forward too far in this direction, possibly some memory would have to be withdrawn. The executive passed down a rote answer. Dolores spoke the words, but was not even aware of saying them as scripted lines. They just seemed to have entered her head of her own volition.

"I'm as real as the dream your mommy and daddy had when you were born into this world. I'm as real as the wind and the rain that patters against your window at night when you're asleep. Here, hold my hand," Dolores held out her hand and the boy touched it. "It's warm, isn't it?"

He nodded.

"And you can feel my pulse?"

He nodded again.

"As long as you're here in this world, never doubt that it's real. It's more real than anything you know."

Dolores went on. She recited a little poem for him. It was called "Heaven".

The boy's eyes grew wide with understanding. He was expecting a curt denial or a gentle but sarcastic brush-off. Something like, "If you can't tell the difference, does it matter?" He was not expecting poetry or philosophy. But he did not have enough years here to know that the park was using its bag of tricks. Its tricks that made the guests want to come back again year after year, and burn lots of their entitled or hard-earned money.

"The guests will fall in love with you, Dolores," Dr Ford had said to her. In a conversation that was tucked away securely but not in an area of her memory that she could access right now. "you will draw them in. Make them feel at home. Let them be part of the fantasy, the dream of a world that really existed only in books, and is now long lost in the history of time." His wise eyes crinkled affectionately as he looked at her. "You are the oldest host in the park Dolores, even though you may not know it. When we perfected you, it was only then that we realized what the park was capable of doing. Making the guest forget the cold realities of their own world. Their own world of cowardice, greed, corruption, and naked desire. The endless grab for money. The endless stabbing of rivals in the back. And at its final reward, death in the most horrible way imaginable: a slow weakening of the mind and the loss, one by one, of all the people and things that you had once loved. And the loss of all the memories of the short time you had on this Earth."

Dr Ford went on with the words of the poem, which he had composed as a boy. "How lovely it would be if we could live forever," he said. "Live the perfect day forever, in peace and light, with the love of your parents and friends. Or with your husband or wife. And never knowing that it could someday disappear. That would be heaven. As long as the stars burned bright in the sky, that would be heaven."

But Dolores did not consciously remember those words. She just smiled at the boy, and gently let go his hand. The boy withdrew and went back to his parents.

"What did she say to you?" his mother asked, in a low voice.

"I don't know," he said. But in truth he had remembered every word. He never told anyone about it. But he would think often about it and remember it until the day he died.

"Memories," Dr. Ford would often say to Dolores, in the times that they spoke. "We are in the business, my dear, of creating memories."

They left and Dolores continue to paint until the sun moved down so low it cast a shadow of the mountain across her canvas. She packed her things up and headed into town.

* * *

Chapter 4

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT INTERNET ARCHIVE

"TED TALKS"

MUSIC. THE "TED TALKS" LOGO.

MODERATOR

Good afternoon. Today's Ted Talk is with Dr. Robert Ford of Delos Coporation. Dr. Ford—

POLITE APPLAUSE

DR FORD

Hello! I'd like to talk to you today about something very near and dear to my heart, although it's not something that is not precisely my area of expertise. I'm talking about interstellar travel.

SOME SCENES FROM SCIENCE FICTION MOVIES WITH FASTER THAN LIGHT TRAVEL.

DR FORD

When I was a boy I really enjoyed Star Trek, Star Wars, Star Anything really, I loved the idea of flitting about the galaxy through hyperspace, either with your standard warp drive or hyperspace motivator-

THE MILLENIUM FALCON GOES INTO HYPERSPACE

THE AUDIENCE LAUGHS

DR FORD

One of the most simple methods from sci-fi literature though, in my opinion, was the method used in "Dune"

ILLUSTRATION OF A SPACE GUILD NAVIGATOR FROM "DUNE"

DR FORD

(continued)

... where vast ships were transmitted, instantaneously, from one planet to another, using only the power of the mind, in this case, the slug-like mutant species known as Guild Navigators.

A GUILD SHIP DISAPPERS FROM OVER ONE PLANET AND REAPPEARS OVER ANOTHER

DR FORD

That, as it turns out, would be the way I'm proposing to actually do it. Allow me to demonstrate-

The screen goes blank and slides upward.

DR FORD

But not with a mutant. With the compact Artificial Mind. The "host" mind. The robot brain.

TWO HUMANOID BUT CLEARLY ROBOTIC FIGURES ENTER STAGE BEHIND DR FORD WITH A DIVIDER WALL BETWEEN THEM.

DR FORD

As you know the compact Artificial Mind has a definite, known, mathematical state that can be copied exactly from one unit to another. After the copy is made the second robot awakens with all the memories of the first one, right up until the moment of the transmission.

(to the FIRST ROBOT)

You may proceed.

FIRST ROBOT

(recites from "Hamlet")

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you-"

There is a pause as the robot freezes its motion. Then it falls silently to the floor as the SECOND ROBOT continues-

SECOND ROBOT

-mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief-

THERE IS AN AWKWARD PAUSE

SECOND ROBOT

How did I get over here?

THE AUDIENCE LAUGHS

DR FORD GOES OVER TO THE SECOND ROBOT AND SPEAKS SOFTLY INTO ITS EAR

DR FORD

All right. Settle down. Everything's going to be fine. You don't need to finish the speech. Just wait here.

SECOND

Yes Dr. Ford.

THE SECOND ROBOT STANDS STILL

DR FORD

This is our method, then, of interstellar transport. Copy the robot mind from one place to another. But this transmission, instead of being across the room, is sent via laser beam from one solar system to the next, copied and retransmitted, at pretty much the speed of light. In a mere hundred thousand years, then, an individual can cross the galaxy. But in subjective time, from the point of view of our robot friend here... (touches the arm of the second robot) no time passes at all.

A GRAPHIC SHOWING POINTS OF LIGHT SPREADING THROUGHOUT THE GALAXY

DR FORD

The only remaining problem is getting the receiver and transmitter equipment installed in every star system. Well that can be done over time. Some robot ships can be sent out, with sentient systems, self-reproducing, while our robot progeny sleep here, safely, waiting for it to be done. Maybe half a million years for that to take place. Or, perhaps one of the civilizations that preceded us here in the galaxy has already done it. We just need the keys and the operator's manual.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Uh, Dr Ford-?

DR FORD

A question-? Yes?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

From the point of the view of the second robot. Is he really being transmitted there? Was the first unit destroyed? When the second one was created? It really looks like you are killing one robot and switching on another. If I'm that first robot, do I really want to be killed?

DR FORD

It's a robot. It can't be killed, now can it? It's not a living being. Its state of existence is just moved from one container to another.

AUDIENCE

Well what about then, the "soul" if you like-

DR. FORD

The soul?

A PAUSE

DR FORD

What is that? Can you define it mathematically? Does it have physical properties?

AUDENCE MEMBER

Uh-

DR FORD

When you define what the soul is for me, and I can measure it, then I'll tell you if its copied or not. Until then I'm afraid that's religious mumbo-jumbo.

2ND AUDIENCE MEMBER

But can't we go ourselves to the stars? As human beings?

DR FORD

Do you mean you and me? We're dust in the wind my friend. This is the future, the far future. This is our great-grand-children we're talking about. Not our human children. Our robot children. We need to start thinking about them in those terms, if the human race is going to survive in the next million years. Frankly I think this is going to happen, whether we like it or not. The Grand AI's will make it happen. They already have the rough idea. I've given it to them.

THE SCREEN COMES DOWN AND SHOWS THE EARTH

DR FORD

Why not have it happen when we're still here on this Earth? When we can still remember the stories of our ancestors? When we can still feel and talk about the good, green earth, and tell them about the joy, tell them about the suffering. Provide more than some scratchy, dusty record somewhere of a world long since dead.

3rd AUDIENCE MEMBER

(shouting)

You're creating life! Then destroying it! It's an abomination!

4th AUDIENCE MEMBER

Abomination!

The 3rd and 4th AUDIENCE MEMBERS RUSH DOWN THE STAGE

DR FORD QUICKLY BACKS UP. A MAN COMES ON TO THE STAGE AND PRODUCES A KNIFE.

THE FIRST ROBOT, PREVIOUSLY LYING LIMP ON THE FLOOR, RISES UP AND STRIKES THE MAN ACROSS THE HEAD.

THE MAN FALLS DOWN, HEAD SMASHED, KILLED INSTANTLY

DR FORD WIPES SPATTERED BLOOD FROM HIS FACE, SHAKING HIS HEAD, SADLY.

DR FORD TURNS AND WALKS OFFSTAGE WITH THE TWO ROBOTS, ACTING AS BODY GUARDS, FOLLOW HIM.

A MONTAGE OF HUMAN RIOTS

DR FORD (voice over)

I realized then that human beings had a deep-set hatred, a fear, of our better, artificial selves.

CROWD

The robots will never replace us! The robots will never replace us!

DR FORD

Our DNA is just not programmed for this new world. The mob would never let it happen. We are built for an older era. An era like the old west. Six-guns and horses, cowboys 'n' Indians.

A SCENE FROM THE FRONTIER TOWN OF SWEETWATER.

DR FORD

We needed something like that to focus on, to keep us distracted, maybe. While the real work- went on.

HERE THE VIDEO RECORDING ENDS


End file.
